Arturia mini lab 3 vs Akai mpk mini mk3..

[Jac459]

I kind of liked my Akai, didn't see too much shortcomings in it, yet I finally decided to go for the arturia as I had a small GAS crisis.

I was expecting only a small increment, but boy was I wrong.

The arturia is in fact blowing the Akai under the water:
Here are the reasons:

Build quality: it is a no contest, arturia is one or too categories above. The feeling is very different. You go from a toy feel to something feeling premium.

Connection: arturia is usb c, you can even plug to an ipad akai has old school square connector (not usual usb).

Kmobs, Faders: I liked the akai ones, arturia are very good also. But arturia has 4 additional faders. Arturia win again.

Drum pad: akai win on this one, I think they feel very slightly better.

Piano: I prefere the feel of the arturia.

Pitch bend mod: arturia is much better. The akai joystick is not awesome.

DAW integration: arturia is 1000 better on this one.you even get an oled with the name of the track and all as well as many shortcuts. The integration is awesome.

[Mattvank]

THX for your assessment. I really like the AKAI´s as well.I owned the MPK25/261/APCkey mk1 and was never disappointed but i take a look at the arturia. The Integration thing looks intresting.
How far the MPK mk3 now is integraded is also intresting. There was an update for R12 and i would be intrested to know if this also apply to the MPK Mini plus.(32keys)

[Jac459]

THX for your assessment. I really like the AKAI´s as well.I owned the MPK25/261/APCkey mk1 and was never disappointed but i take a look at the arturia. The Integration thing looks intresting.
How far the MPK mk3 now is integraded is also intresting. There was an update for R12 and i would be intrested to know if this also apply to the MPK Mini plus.(32keys)

The mk3 is really cool and light indeed. The fact that I prefere the arturia doesn't mean it is not great. .
For the integration I use reason only as rrp so I can't really say, in bitwig it is night and day but not sure for reason. You can try on arturia YouTube channel, I think they did a demo video with almost all DAWs.

[FrankJaeger]

I bought the mpk mini mk3 a few months ago. I love the pads on it as that seems to be akai's specialty. The keys, however, I'm not sold on. IMO there's a problem with the velocity sensors or something where you have to push the keys really hard when you play or the instruments will sound too soft. Also, the keys themselves are very small which I really don't like.
It's still a solid controller for the price though.

[Jac459]

I bought the mpk mini mk3 a few months ago. I love the pads on it as that seems to be akai's specialty. The keys, however, I'm not sold on. IMO there's a problem with the velocity sensors or something where you have to push the keys really hard when you play or the instruments will sound too soft. Also, the keys themselves are very small which I really don't like.
It's still a solid controller for the price though.

Fully agreed. The knobs are great too.

[Freakmech]

There was an update for R12 and i would be intrested to know if this also apply to the MPK Mini plus.(32keys)

I pre-ordered the new MPK Mini Plus and it is NOT included in the newest update which is strange because the MPK Mini Play is included and they were released at the same time. So with the Mini Plus there isn’t an auto detect profile. The keyboard/pitch and mod wheel work as normal. The drum pads work on Kong. But transport doesn’t work and the knobs aren’t assigned to anything. It definitely is not plug and play.